In October 1996, academic pragmatist superstar Richard Rorty (along with
Cornel West and Betty Friedan) shared the platform with AFL-CIO head John
Sweeny at a teach-in held at Columbia University which was attended by
several thousand students, unionists and assorted activists. Many of us,
including me, held out the hope that this would be the prelude to a social
movement of the sort that took place during the New Deal. We dreamed that
the AFL-CIO would draw upon the ranks of thousands of college students who
would be dispatched into the South to organize the unorganized. Most of
all, we hoped that this even would signal a break with the kind of
anti-Communism that characterized the old labor movement.
As it turns out, things didn't quite move in that direction. The AFL-CIO
has been able to accommodate itself quite nicely to the status quo. Drawing
strength from a bull market and low unemployment, it has mostly endeavored
to win strikes in well-established unions like the Teamsters and elect
Democrats. Some hold out hope that the protests in Seattle will mark the
emergence of a fighting labor movement once again, but it seems unlikely
given the record of the past four years. While Sweeny and Hoffa have no
trouble denouncing the oppression of labor in the third world, there has
been virtually no movement to root out these conditions in places like
Alabama and Mississippi, the third world within our borders.
The other side of the equation is the intelligentsia who have attached
themselves to the Sweeny bureaucracy, people like Richard Rorty whose view
of labor-academic unity entails sweeping Vietnam under the rug. Instead of
condemning the AFL-CIO for failing to effectively challenge the imperialist
war, Rorty has lashed out at demonstrators for "alienating" Joe Six-Pack.
Unlike Rorty, the intelligentsia of the 1930s knew how important it was to
stake out a principled anti-imperialist position as writers like Hemingway
rallied in defense of the Spanish Republic.
In today's NY Times, Rorty finds himself on the wrong side of a key
domestic policy question. He provides backhanded support for those who
would weaken if not eliminate Social Security as an "entitlement". Although
Rorty's op-ed piece is directed against legislation that would allow
retirees to supplement their income, the logic points in the direction of
turning the entire Social Security system into a "means" tested program:
====
Making the Rich Richer
By RICHARD RORTY
A few days ago I got a nice letter from the Social Security Administration,
telling me that I was entitled to some $1,600 a month, but that
unfortunately I couldn't receive it because I was still earning a lot of
money. Last week I opened the newspaper to find that the House of
Representatives has voted unanimously to have the money sent to me anyway.
The Senate and the president, it appears, are quite prepared to approve
this change. So in the course of this year I shall get government checks
for about $20,000. About $8,000 of it will go for federal and state taxes,
but I shall still have a net $1,000 extra a month that I never expected to
have.
I do not feel entitled to that money. Like a lot of other Americans who are
68, I am making a very good living. When I stop working I will get a
pension that ensures that I still live perfectly comfortably. I would like
Congress to use the Social Security taxes I've paid over the last 45 years
to promote the general welfare.
(clip)
===
The problem with Rorty's tacitly "redistributive" proposal is that it
dovetails with rightwing advice that Security Security be privatized. In a
newspaper column regarding Social Security by William F. Buckley, titled
"It's the rich who are on the welfare dole," he defined rich as being any
family making over $ 20,000 per year. Buckley and other rightwingers have
promoted privatizing Social Security for many years now, using Chile as a
model. After the Pinochet coup, the Chicago boys dismantled the social
security system as one of their first measures.
Of course the measure to allow retirees to supplement their income through
working has long been championed by the Republicans themselves. The repeal
of the earnings limit also has become a popular cause lately among
employers, many of whom once criticized it as a salve for the rich.
The Clinton administration has advocated the idea for years, but only if it
were accompanied by broader reforms to keep the Social Security system
strong enough to withstand the retirement of the enormous baby boom
generation starting in slightly more than a decade.
So, perhaps it makes sense to describe Rorty's op-ed piece as one that
resonates with both the liberal and conservative establishment, which after
all has been exactly the agenda of the Clinton administration for the past
8 years.
Louis Proyect
(The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
